was afraid his neck had snapped. He slumped to the ground in a stupor.
It took fifteen minutes before Veitch had calmed enough to have a reasonable conversation with Tom. Robertson had scurried back indoors, barricading the doorway with furniture. Even then Veitch couldn't sit and spent the time pacing in circles around Tom, who sat cross-legged, drawing on a joint, unable to hide the shake in his hands.
'What was that thing?' Veitch asked.
'This place has been linked to horses much longer than the racing fraternity realised. Back in the earliest times, it was dedicated to Epona. Her name derives from the Celtic word for horse and she was one of the greatest goddesses of the Celts. All riders-warriors, travellers, whoever-bowed their head to Epona. In Wales, she was known as Rhiannon, in Ireland Etain or Macha.' Tom let the smoke drift into the wind. 'She was the patron of journeys, particularly the most important journey of all: from this life to the next. She was usually pictured carrying a key that unlocked the door to Otherworld.'
'Yeah? Then it ties into this place. The doorway to the Land of the Dead, and all that.'
'Yes. Amazing how it all fits together.' Veitch didn't appear to notice the sarcasm in Tom's voice; he was lost in his own childlike amazement. 'The Night Rider was her avatar. Once he was probably a man like you or me, perhaps a man who even lived at this site. But at some point he became infused with the essence of Epona, became, in a way, the totem he worshipped. And so he eternally guards this sacred spot were she canters back and forth between the worlds.'
'Horses.' Veitch kicked a stray stone across the yard. 'Don't see the bleedin' attraction. Smelly animals.'
'Horse worship persisted from the earliest times of the nomadic people in this land. To them, the horse was a symbol of fertility, energy and power.' Dreamily, Tom nodded his head to some inner soundtrack. 'Worshipping is wishing by any other name, and if you wish hard enough you can create something from nothing.' Words from another world came back to him.
'What's that, then? You're saying all those folk gave her the powers. Made her. She's one of the Danann bastards, right?'
'Yes and yes and yes, and no and no and no.'
'Oh, shut the fuck up. I'm not going to talk to you any more when you're smoking.' He marched irritatedly into Robertson's apartment.
The chill before dawn brought a deep ache to their bones. They sat on a bench, watching the moon scud across the heavens, the sky slowly turn from midnight blue to pink and gold, the grass growing from grey to green. An affecting peace lay over everything. When the birds came alive in the trees that ringed the lawned area, Veitch turned to Tom and smiled. 'It'll be all right, you know.'
Tom nodded noncommittally.
'What happened? You know, when you met the giant?'
Tom considered how to put the experience into words, then simply shook his head. 'That's a story for another time. All you need to know now is you've got the necessary permission to bring Shavi back.'
The sun came up soon after. The diffuse golden light glimmered through the branches, eventually making its way across the lawn until it reached the dew pond. At first nothing happened, but when the light was just right they could make out a shimmering image of Shavi's body lying in a flower-bedecked bower. It was insubstantial, fading in and out like a poor hologram. He appeared to be sleeping; only the stark paleness of his skin gave a clue to his true state.
Tom thought he saw the glint of tears in Veitch's eyes, but the Londoner looked away before he could be sure.
'We better do it,' Veitch said solemnly.
'Are you sure? This is your last chance to back out.'
'Yes.'
'You understand where you're going? What lies ahead? What it could do to your mind? You know you might not be coming back?'
Veitch fixed a cold eye on him. 'Just get on with it.'
A pang of guilt clutched at Tom's heart. He knew what lay ahead, and he knew Veitch could not even begin to guess the extent of the horrors that lurked in the Grim Lands. How could he send the man to face that? But even as he thought it, he knew he had no choice; only Veitch stood a chance of bringing Shavi back. And therein lay the tragedy.
On the edge of the dew pond, Tom knelt down and kissed the damp grass. When he stood back up, he had composed himself. 'Are you ready?'
'Bring it on,' Veitch replied in a cod-American accent.
Tom closed his eyes and attempted to access the knowledge GogMagog had implanted there. He had already used the secret words of power to dismiss the guardian. Now there was one remaining: the key to the door. He couldn't reach it in his memory by normal means. He simply made a space, and then it leapt into it. He didn't remember speaking, but when he opened his eyes, Veitch was clutching his ears and grimacing.
There was a sound like a jammed door being wrenched open and the air over the dew pond peeled back. Through it Tom could see thick grey fog, swirling in the wind.
Veitch made to say something, but couldn't find the words. Instead, he grinned, winked and then launched himself through the hole in the air. The wrenching noise echoed again as the door closed, leaving Tom alone to stare at the fading visage of Shavi.
Chapter Ten
'Below is time.' Church tried to sound more confident than he felt, but Ruth was not about to be fooled.
'I still think I should come with you.'
He shook his head firmly. 'I'm not trying to protect you like some big macho idiot. You'd be the first person I'd want alongside me in a fight. But I told you, one of us has to be here to see things through.'
'You're not being very consistent. You made a big thing about how you felt all five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had to be together to get a result. Now you're saying I can do it on my own-
'I hate having smart people around me. Okay, I'll be back. Did that sound like Arnie Schwarzenegger? Sorry, I wasted the eighties at the movies.'
'You're so lowbrow.' She put her arms around him and pulled him to her, planting a wet kiss on his lips. 'Be back soon. We have a lot of lost time to make up for.'
In the constantly changing corridors where the flickering torches never cast enough light, the kiss brought an ache to his heart. More than anything, he wanted to stay with Ruth, secure in their newfound world, but he knew that was an illusion. He had to journey down into the deep, dark bowels of the ship where there was no security, no softness. He drew his jacket around him, resting one hand on the cold short sword that hung at his belt.
'Life's good as long as you don't weaken,' he muttered, repeating the credo he had once only half-jokingly spoken aloud. 'Please don't weaken.'
The ship grew icier and smelled danker the more he progressed, as if he were journeying beneath the earth itself. He had adjusted to the constant gentle rocking, but the creak of the timbers was like the background chatter of a hundred voices, obscuring other subtle sounds that might come as a warning. The hiss of the torches brought sweetly perfumed smoke to his nose, but the underlying odour of dampness could never be hidden.
After a while he started cautiously trying the doors on either side. Most were locked, some rooms were empty, but in one something that was a mass of tentacles and snapping jaws rushed towards him squealing insanely. He slammed the door and hurried on, vowing not to open any more.
The ship went on forever. More than anything, Church feared getting lost down there, spending the rest of his life wandering around in the dark, living on rats (although he had not seen any vermin-perhaps something else was already feeding on them), slowly turning pale and mad. But he had a gut instinct that the ship was sentient in some way he couldn't explain, and that while the corridors behind him might close and move, when he returned, they would lead him back to the upper decks by one route or another.
At that point he began to wonder if he was really on a ship at all; if the spy he had encountered in Edinburgh
